Practice Music

We get many questions about what songs are best for practicing your various swing dance styles. Here’s our answer! Please keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list and, in fact, we are barely scratching the surface here. We encourage you to seek out these swing-era artists, and also find music done in this style by bands practicing today (check out our bands page for live swing music in St. Louis). http://jazz-on-line.com/ is a great resource that allows you to listen to and download much of this music. Next to each playlist heading is also a link to associated Spotify playlist. Listings are ordered as “Song,” Artist, Album, Year, (Beats per minute).

*St. Louis Shag is a highly rhythmic dance that can be danced to a variety of up-tempo jazz and swing styles. This playlist emphasizes music with a strong back-beat, which matches the shag basic well, but please note it is not exhaustive.